


Give Me Love

by MockingBlue (RoyalSeal)



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-12
Updated: 2015-03-12
Packaged: 2018-03-17 12:23:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3529250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoyalSeal/pseuds/MockingBlue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A consciousness stream inspired by the news about Eddie and his approaching (possibly) villainous destiny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Give Me Love

She’s leaving him. Iris is really leaving him. And though it pains him to admit it, he isn’t surprised. He’s known how Barry felt about her for a long time, and he’s had his suspicions about Iris’ feelings for Barry for about a month now. He’s just been in denial about it. 

It annoys him to think that they’d all be surprised if he told them that he knew. He’s a _detective_  for God’s sake, and a damn good one. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? They never see him as anything but what they want to see him as. No matter how hard he tries, no one ever seems to see him as anything but what they want to see him as.

When he was a kid, people told him he was fat. He’d thought that was funny. Why yes, he was fat, how  _clever_  of you to notice. He’d been content with himself, until his father had intervened. “Show them you’re  _more_  than that, son.” He had said, putting a hand on Eddie’s shoulder and clearly trying to sound inspiring. 

Eddie hadn’t understood. He didn’t need to be  _more_. But he obeyed. He stepped up his nutrition, cut out the Cheetos, started running and joined the lacrosse team. He lost forty pounds and then gained twenty in muscle. He’d felt pretty good. Now maybe people would like him. 

But all they’d said was, “You’re too muscular. You intimidate people.”

Too fat, too fit. He couldn’t win. So he tried another tactic. He became a police officer and worked his butt off to be the best he could be. He made detective within two years, and transferred to the CCPD, where he maintained the highest arrest record in the force. He was good at what he did, and he worked hard. He was proud of himself.

But all anybody else ever said was, “You’re so cocky. Who keeps a record of how many arrests they’ve made?”

So being good at your job annoyed people. Fine, he’d try something else. He dumbed himself down. He went to trivia night with Iris, Barry, and Barry’s should-have-been date Felicity, and he had  _known_  that the name of Han Solo’s ship was the Millennium Falcon. Come on. He was a fat dork in high school. He’d lived for comics and Star Wars. But they didn’t want to know that Eddie. Nobody had wanted to know the smart, geeky Eddie. So he made himself into a jock with no knowledge of pop culture, bypassed the name “Millennium Falcon” and hit “The Black Pearl”. 

And you know what people started to say? “Eddie’s just dumb. What a poor baby.”

Too fat, too pretty, too cocky, too intelligent, too dumb. What else could he do to make people like him? He tried the simplest of options; loving people as much as he could. He did his best, too, worked his butt off at it, just as much as he worked his butt off at getting in shape or being the best damned detective in the CCPD. Joe’s foster son is in a coma? Eddie covered his shifts. Barry’s having a bad day and clearly getting picked on? Eddie did his best to give him some pointers on punches and hang out with him a little. Barry’s got a blog? A crazy one, but one that he cares about? Eddie subscribed and reads his posts, gives him feedback and leaves comments. He validated Iris at every chance he got, asked her to share her feelings with him if she ever seemed uncomfortable, and he  _knows_  that you don’t earn love just by doing good things but…look where this has gotten him.

Unloved.

And “not Barry”.

As he leans against the closed door of the bedroom that used to be theirs, listening to her pack all her clothes into a box, he thinks about how much of him revolves around other people. What other people want, what they expect, what they think of him. And the sad thing is, other people’s expectations of him make up pretty much everything about him. He has tried to please others for so long and centered so much of who he is around what other people want that, when he thinks about it, he really doesn’t know much of anything about Eddie Thawne anymore. 

He touches his forehead against the cool wood of the door jam. He’s realizing he only knows pretty much two things about himself for certain.

He likes blue.

And he doesn’t want to be alone. 

But he always ends up alone, so maybe he had better start learning how to keep himself that way. It’s safer in the end. 


End file.
